Grab teams up with bike-sharing companies to form GrabCycle

PHOTO: Vulcan Post

Grab, most commonly known for its ride sharing platform, has just announced that it is launching GrabCycle Beta, an app that will aggregate bike sharing partners oBike, GBikes, Anywheel, and Popscoot into a single app.

The newly launched app allows anyone to find a bike or an e-scooter whenever they need it.

According to Grab's press release, GrabCycle is a project by GrabVentures, which is Grab's innovation arm to test new mobility and payment concepts.

Photo: Vulcan Post

Along with the announcement, Grab has also announced that it is partnering up with Sentosa as its first GrabCycle Venue partner.

Through the partnership, there will be GrabCycle bike parking stations across Sentosa, where riders can easily park their bicycles or e scooters easily.

Here's a look at the app announced at the press event:

Photo: Vulcan PostPhoto: Vulcan Post

"With GrabCycle, we move one step closer towards our vision of being a true multi-modal platform with transport options to suit every need," said Reuben Lai, Head of GrabVentures.

If you are wondering when the app will be available, there are no official date announced.

However, Grab shared that it is expecting to roll out the app by first half of the year.

Photo: Vulcan Post

For partners like oBike, GBikes, Anywheel, and Popscoot, they will have access to Grab's 86 million user base, and also enjoy GrabPay and GrabRewards' integration.

Founded in Singapore in January 2017, oBike claims to be Southeast Asia's first smart station-less bike-sharing company.

In Singapore, there are reportedly over 14,000 oBikes docked around various locations, with more than a million active users in a country of 5.5 million people.

Grab also quietly invested in oBike's $45 million Series B round that was announced in August, as reported by tech media Techcrunch.

Photo: Vulcan Post

GBikes on the other hand, have raised $20 million in its initial round of funding.

Since its inception in May last year, GBikes shared that it planned to launch 3,000 of its bicycles throughout Singapore by end-September.

With bike sharing heating up in Singapore, it makes sense for Grab to launch an aggregator app instead of launching their own bike sharing service.

It stays true to Grab's strategy in the early days, where it was originally launched as an asset light third party taxi-booking app.

This is similar to other technology giants around the world - where everyone is operating an asset light model.

Just as Facebook does not own any of the content on its platform, Airbnb does not own any of the properties on its platform, GrabCycle now too does not own any of the bicycles on its platform.